Text of a review of Mr. Dumle Koote’s two Books, Academic Disciplines and Career Choice and How to Bypass Wilderness Through Academics, launched on December 3, 2011, at Sacred Heart Parish, Catholic Church, 34 Illoabuchi, Diobu, Port Harcourt, by Dr. Barigbon Nsereka.
TITLES: HOW TO BYPASS THE WILDERNESS WITH ACADEMICS AND ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES AND CAREER CHOICE
AUTHOR: DUMLE E. KOOTE
PUBLISHER: CEL-BEZ PUBLISHING CO. LTD, OWERRI.
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2O11
PAGINATION: BOOK ONE: 104 PAGES, BOOK TWO: 125 PAGES
REVIEWER: Barigbon Gbara Nsereka, Ph.D
It is a common saying that the surest way of hiding certain information from Nigerians is to put such information within the pages of a book. This is a brutal indictment and castigation of Nigerians as a poor reading public. And how does one reconcile the poor reading culture of a people with the fact that education, represented by books among other things, is the bedrock of development?
Education banishes ignorance, breaks superstition and liberally criticises people’s values, life options and redirects societal goals and pursuits. In his classic book entitled Laws, Plato argues that it is education that determines whether man is the tamest or the wildest animal on earth. According to him, if a “man lacks education, he is the most savage of beasts”. The production and maintenance of a good society is the main objective of John Locke’s theory of education. On his own part, John Dewey sees the task of education as “an emancipation and enlargement of experience.”
Education frees the individual from the prejudices and irrational assumptions of everyday life and enlarges his experience. For Francis Bacon, knowledge is power to master and interpret one’s environment. Education, therefore, is the backbone of every individual and that of a nation.
It is because education is so pivotal to individual and societal living that the remnants of patriotic Nigerians have continued to reason with Edmund Burke that all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. The dwindling fortunes of reading, especially among the youths, must be recovered by good men so that the vicious culture of little or no reading does not overtake the virtue of educational advancement.
One of such good men who are doggedly fighting with their writing skills to kick little reading, like polio, out of Nigeria, is the scholar that has invited us here today, Mr Dumle E. Koote.
At the risk of harvesting the fruits of abysmal reading among the Nigerian youths, Mr Koote has put together two books, one career-based and the other omnibus or multi-purpose. Piqued by the academic frustration of many youths occasioned by misguided choices of academic disciplines and careers, Mr Koote has, in his book entitled Academic Disciplines and Career Choice, laid a solid foundation for choosing careers by youths in schools and colleges and this, the author does with a comprehensive approach. Then, to deliver youths from the wilderness of lack, he prescribes the way out as using applied educational knowledge to explore the world of open doors and opportunities. This he does in the second book, How to bypass the Wilderness with Academics.
A close look at Academic Disciplines and Career Choice shows that within 13 even chapters, the highly patriotic author inserts the Nigerian coat of arm, national anthem, national pledge and the Nigerian flag in the work, probably as a stamp of national approval and authority; demonstrates a passion for the imparting of knowledge in the youths while exuding a strong odour of scholarship. Wearing a variegated-coloured coat that portrays him as an educator, guidance counsellor, psychologist, philosopher, sportsman and business manager all blended as one, the author lists various academic fields of study under the broad headings of engineering, medicine and administration; outlines the requirements for getting into each field and states the qualifications derivable from the numerous disciplines.
The book which traverses the realms of science and technology, sports, education, leadership success and vocabulary building, contains contemporary ideas and information, is illustrated with pictorial examples and couched in simple and clear English. And because the language used is lively, boredom is vanquished. The book which comprehensively provides the compass for discovering and locating personal talents, is motivational and sows in the school or college child the seed of self-confidence that, if well nurtured, can grow, blossom and develop into a tall tree of academic prosperity.
Unlike Academic Disciplines and Career Choice which is hinged principally on achieving educational success through the right choice of career, How to bypass the Wilderness with Academics is a potpourri of topics that are meant to school interested persons in setting high standards of life through love, creativity and wisdom.
Invoking the spirit of Aristotle, the author in this eclectic work, presents and expresses his ideas with several allusions to the Holy Bible and spices his points of view with quotable quotes. He dexterously handles, in 12 chapters, issues bordering on general knowledge, patriotism, behaviour and attitude, communication, business success, tackling unemployment and aspects of modern civilization. The ultimate aim of How to bypass the Wilderness with Academics is to prove that education perfectly serves its purpose when matched with the right attitude, native intelligence and entrepreneurial spirit.
By and large, the author has, in the writing of the two books, proved to be highly resourceful. His religious inclination juts out of the pages of the books, especially those of How to bypass the Wilderness with Academics. He has proved his mettle as a business management scholar and shown such skills in writing that can help pull the Nigerian youths from the path of dishonour.
Yet the wings of the intellectual gigantism displayed in these books are being clipped by a sprinkling of technical and linguistic errors in the materials, which we cannot for time limitation point out one by one at this forum. But to prove that they exist, a couple of examples will suffice.
Although the cover concept of How to bypass the Wilderness with Academics is beautiful, the use of “academics” in the title to mean academic activity or work, is a semantic error. This is a common error even among some people who should know. But an error is an error no matter on whose lips or pen it comes to light. Academic can be used either as a noun or an adjective (which is the more common usage). When used as a noun, it means only one thing: teacher in a tertiary institution, that is, lecturer.
This also faults the use of “academician” when referring to a lecturer. “Academician” means, a member of an academy like the Academy of Sciences. “How to bypass the Wilderness with Education or Academic…” should have been a better version.
Also semantically offensive is the use of “academic scholar” on the first line of paragraph three on page ix of the same book. The correct thing is scholar. The preceding word academic, is otiose (redundant). One cannot be a scholar if one is not academic. It is a semantic slip too to mistake “originality” for “origin.”
There are collocational errors like the use of “abreast with” instead of “abreast of”; “pride for one’s nation” instead of “pride of one’s nation.”
In Academic Disciplines and Career Choice, the listing of some social science courses and humanities or arts courses under the broad heading of Administration is a misplacement. Economics, International Relations, Educationa, Theatre Arts, Mass Communication and Music, do not appropriately fit into the class of administration.
The second word under vocabulary building in the same book, page 118, is recent. Here, current is seen as the synonym of recent. I disagree. Current means “at present” while recent means “having happened a short time ago.”
These negligible errors and others like them do not, however, do any violence to the works which have been so ably put together by a fine writer, business management colossus, innovative entrepreneur and motivational educator, Mr Dumle E Koote whose hot ideas have brightened up the world of scholarship.
I therefore recommend the books, Academic Disciplines and Career Choice and How to bypass the Wilderness with Academics to all parents and guardians who are worth the name, all educators, business practitioners, guidance counselors, all UBE and SS students and all who want a redemption of Nigeria’s fast-decaying educational system. So, help me God.
THE JOURNALIST’S
GRAMMAR
COMPASS
by
Barigbon Nsereka
08037719048 (sms only)
